Lead user centred design activities

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This standard is about leading user centred design activities.

User-centred design (UCD) is an iterative design process which focuses on users and their needs to inform the design or redesign of products or services that allow users to participate fully to achieve their goals with a positive user experience. In UCD, design teams involve users throughout the design process to develop User eXperience (UX) insights that inform interaction design and the design of service journeys using inclusive and accessible design methods.

Leading user centred design activities involves building capability, knowledge, talent and expertise within the team that delivers UX research, analyses the findings, conducts UX design, creates content for digital products and services and carries out service design assignments. This includes building user-centred teams to lead UX research to produce actionable insights that inform the design of products and services at all stages of development, working to maintain the fundamental design principles of being user led in the design of services and products.

This standard is for those who need to lead user centred design activities as part of their duties.

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1. Collaborate with stakeholders to ensure that the strategy for UX research practice is aligned to organisational priorities
2. Create and maintain the strategic plan and prioritised roadmap for the development of user centred design capabilities in the organisation
3. Produce standards and guidelines to support user centred development delivery in line with organisational procedures
4. Disseminate organisational standards for user centred design to promote adoption within design teams
5. Maintain organisational user centred design standards in line with industry best practice
6. Build a team of user-centred design practitioners with clear roles and career pathways supported by structured learning and development plans
7. Define user centred design performance metrics to monitor service performance
8. Produce management reports, analysis and insight for user centred design capabilities in line with organisational requirements
9. Act as an ambassador for user centred development as a key enabler for digital transformation, coaching teams across the organisation in how to deliver this effectively
10. Identify skills gaps and development opportunities for user centred design teams to continuously improve performance capabilities
11. Define the organisation selection of tools, techniques, platforms and technologies needed to enable user-centric delivery across UX research and insight analysis, UX design, content creation and service design
12. Deliver consistent style guides and design patterns across user-centred design to make content consistent across organisational services

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1. Why user-centred design is important to organisations and how UX research, UX design, content creation and service design contributes to it
2. How to advocate for user centred design across the organisation and secure organisational commitment to the involvement of users in informing UX research
3. How to plan and drive user centred design activities, providing expert advice and guidance to support the adoption of agreed organisational approaches
4. How to ensure that system touch points that users interact with are part of a coherent, consistent experience
5. How to champion accessibility and usability for organisational services and products, raising awareness of them and ensuring that those involved in their design and delivery adopt user-centric approaches
6. The steps involved in identifying the needs of technical and business stakeholders, and how to interpret between them
7. How to translate technical concepts into nontechnical language and understanding to inform and update stakeholders on user centred design delivery across the organisation
8. How to work with multiple stakeholders at all levels to understand detailed user centred design requirements to design positive user experiences
9. The steps involved in improving the accessibility of existing and legacy systems and how to apply them
10. How to develop and implement organisational policies, standards, methods and guidelines for user centred design activities
11. How to align user centred design activities with organisational strategy and objectives across the organisation
12. Industry standard user-centred design approaches, tools and techniques and how to apply them
13. The industry standard technologies used to build and operate digital services
14. How to collaborate closely with colleagues in different digital disciplines (including architecture, design, software development data, service and operations delivery)
15. How to synthesise UX research, develop insights and present conclusions to inform decision-making and drive actions
16. How to develop roadmaps, business cases and performance metrics for user centred design activities
17. How to develop or source organisational resources and capabilities to facilitate the adoption and exploitation of user centred design activities
18. How to establish and run a community of practice for user centred design, develop people and set strong consistent standard for UX research, UX design, content creation and service design practice
19. How to support the development of team members at all levels, including junior members of staff,  through shadowing, coaching and mentoring as well as through formal line management and training needs analysis